The Role of HR in the Age of Talent, a survey from Vurv and The Human Capital Institute, shows that only 22 percent of HR leaders were considered experts across talent management issues, such as globalization, outsourcing, workforce integration and financial acumen. For extended periods of time, HR has been viewed as a "necessary evil" in corporations. But now, with the transition from industrial to information economies, talent management has become a critical need for organizational executives. No department is better-suited to fulfill this need than human resources, but in order to meet the challenge HR organizations need to evolve into talent management facilitators.

nowHIRE.com announced the successful implementation of its Government Contractor Edition for Terumo Medical Corporation, a global medical manufacturer.

Buck Consultants, a human resource and benefits consulting firms, has published a white paper Can Your Long-Term Incentive Plan Become More Performance Based Again?. The paper assesses the relative strength of the linkages between company performance and each type of equity when included in a Long-Term Incentive Plan.

Bernard Hodes Group Future Talent team partnered with KPMG to deliver Europe's largest graduate recruitment program. The competitive pitch follows the recent merger of KPMG's UK, German and Swiss businesses, forming KPMG Europe. KPMG were seeking an agency that could partner with them across the three countries and would combine industry experience and original thinking to promote the European graduate opportunity.

B2B publisher Incisive Media has launched a vertical search engine for the IT industryIThound.com. The site will make use of content from sister technology and finance titles including VNUnet.com Accountancy Age and Computing.co.uk, and will feature product reviews, analysis and white papers relating to the industry.

HumanConcepts, the developer of OrgPlusŪ, announced the availability of OrgPlus Enterprise Blueprint, a Web 2.0 solution that empowers C-level leadership, finance, and HR executives and line managers to proactively model the impact of workforce change spurred by growth, reorganizations or company mergers. By creating, comparing and analyzing multiple "what if" workforce scenarios, companies can accelerate organizational change and improve planning decisions as well as gain buy-in from key parties during transformational events, such as a merger or global reorganization.

Survey Says
Nearly 78 percent of owners and managers of small businesses say their companies are either growing as planned or at a faster pace than forecast at the beginning of the year, according to results of a Business Confidence Survey released by Administaff, provider of human-resources services for small and medium-sized businesses.

Survey respondents also are actively filling open positions with 44 percent saying they are hiring full-time employees and 11 percent planning to bring in part-timers. Administaff also released compensation data compiled from its client base; a comparison of first-quarter data against the same period in 2007 shows that average compensation is up 4.9 percent and average commissions have increased 6.8 percent. In addition, overtime pay is running 9.5 percent of regular pay.

The survey also found that business owners and managers are willing to fight to keep valued employees. To do that, more than half of respondents said they are turning to pay increases or providing workers with new challenges or responsibilities.

Overall, over 26 percent of employers plan to increase salaries this year, according to the survey, while 50 percent will maintain current wage levels. Sixty-four percent expect overtime to remain about the same.